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Yanks reminded not to use signals

Yanks reminded not to use signals

NEW YORK -- Because Yankee Stadium's scoreboard radar went on the blink in Thursday afternoon's season opener, the Yankees wound up on Major League Baseball's radar.

Joe Garagiola Jr., MLB's senior vice president of standards and on-field operations, called the Yankees on Saturday to remind them about baseball operations bulletin C-4, which forbids using hand signals to communicate with players about pitch types and speed.

Brett Weber, a coaching assistant seated in the stands near home plate, was gesturing pitch speeds to on-deck batters because the usual scoreboard notification was inaccurate. At least one pitch was shown over 900 mph.

According to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, Weber was also wearing a headset so that he could communicate the pitch types to the scoreboard operations crew, showing that information atop the large center-field scoreboard.

Cashman said that the Yankees expect no disciplinary measures from the call. He senses that Garagiola agrees the guideline needs revision, and he expected that the topic would soon be presented to Joe Torre, MLB's new executive vice president of baseball operations.

"I think [Garagiola] recognizes the fact that there's no real advantage here," Cashman said. "At the same time, there is a bulletin out that says you're not supposed to do that. It's just one of those things, like pine tar. I think it's really silly, personally."

Newscaster Keith Olbermann apparently snapped a picture of Weber's gestures and posted it on Twitter, triggering a blogosphere brushfire.

"It was nothing extraordinary," Olbermann said. "It didn't look to be any kind of sign language. Everything I saw was clearly after the fact. It was not suggestive of sign-stealing or anything like that."

Cashman took a swipe at certain social media circles that jumped all over the incident.

"The psychotics that obsessed about it all day [on Friday], I feel that we did them a favor by keeping them off the street and preventing them from hurting others," Cashman said.